Loveboy "LOVERBOY" 1980 — Digging for Derelicts

I have tried with this blog to really only say positive things. Even if I'm not a giant fan of something, I try to find something interesting about it, but this was a difficult one.

I really wanted to give this album a try because it has sort of haunted me most of my life. I remember my dad getting a Loverboy CD at some point, a gift I think, but I'm not even sure it was this one, it might have been the one with the butt on the cover. Either way, I found it provocative, though not necessarily enough to listen to the music. I was still young enough not to really make the connection between album covers and the music found within. And then at some point I saw the cover of their self-titled record and couldn’t stop looking at it. I was indelibly intrigued in the way that I was with so many androgynous representations.

However, I never had any way of learning anything about it. I couldn't just ask anyone those kinds of things, and obviously, there was no internet. At some point I began to associate the songs "Workin' for the Weekend" and "Turn Me Loose" with this same band and realized this cover must be some kind of fluke, or worse yet, intended as some sort of affront to everything I liked about it. So I sort of just ignored it forever, not wanting to know the answers.

But now I see it in the bins every day at work, no copies ever selling, but more always coming in. I suspect that many people feel exactly the opposite as I do about it. They like the music, but confronted with the album cover, they become trepidatious.

So what exactly is it about the cover? It is a very stark, immediately eye-catching image. Everything is either black, red, or white, the only exception being the model's pale skin. The contrast of the black/white/red aesthetic is undeniably attention-grabbing, and in fact works so well, The White Stripes found great success exclusively using this aesthetic 20 years later. The band's name which doubles as the title, is printed in the upper left corner, which at first consideration seems to be a likely label-mandated choice for quick identification. Upon closer inspection though, it is worked into the placement of words laid over the entire surface of the image.

I had never known, until I began finally researching this, whether the model was male or female. And I don't think it really mattered to me. It was alluring either way. When I recently re-watched Clive Barker's "Lord of Illusions" I felt like Barry Del Sherman, who plays "Butterfield" might be the same person who modeled for this cover. I always assumed it was a man, and the nail polish and make-up were some sort of a statement, but whether that statement was a positive or negative was what gave me pause. In 1980 I don’t think sarcastically referring to an a nail-polished and made up man as “Loverboy” is any less likely than a band offering the same person as a sex symbol. If it was a woman, I feel like it made less of a statement, but still she is dressed less typically for a woman on a rock band’s album cover.

It turns out to be a self-portrait by photographer Barbara Astman. She took it with a polaroid camera and typed some of the lyrics to the album’s song “Little Girl” over the image as it developed. Interestingly though, the lyrics on the cover are not exactly what is sung.

How can I make you love me

How can I make you mine

How can I make you at all

When you don't know what goes on inside your mind

What goes on inside

Don't wanna make you lonely

You need it every day

I wanna make you the only

You're too little, little girl

You're too little, little girl, to fall in love

becomes

hey LOVERBOY how can I make you love

me how can I make you mine how can I

make it all when you don't know what

goes on inside do you honey what goes

on inside me don't wanna make you lon[ely]

you didn't ever forget it baby I want

to make you the only but you don't know

what goes on inside your too little

little girl hey lover boy how can I

make you love me how can I make you

mine how can I make it all when you

don't know hey lover boy I wanna make

Ostensibly, she has added the name of the band/album into the lyrics, so that it can feature on the cover, but in doing so, the condescending narrative becomes swapped. I might think it a coincidence if not for a few other changes that signal intentional subversion. Swapping "You don't know what goes on inside your mind" with "You don't know what goes on inside do you honey” makes a completely different statement.

I wonder if anyone in the band’s camp noticed. My guess is that they didn’t, especially considering some disturbingly ironic specifics of their next album. Though the lyrics for the cover of this album come from the song "Little Girl," for the cover of their second album, titled "Get Lucky," the photographer used his 13 year-old daughter as the model whose butt is featured prominently in red leather pants.

As for the actual music, it has one ubiquitous 80s song, "Turn Me Loose" which I couldn't possibly give any kind of objective review to because I feel like I've known that song my entire life. Some songs like that are comforting, like the Beatles, but this song is unrelentingly obnoxious, even when it's not stuck in your head for three days. That song aside, when I first put this on, I thought it was one of the worst things I'd ever heard. I guess despite my years of fearing it would never live up to the cover, I was still holding out hope that the non-radio hits were going to be a revelation, the songs the band had always wanted to make, but sadly that's not the case. I initially didn't even want to listen a second time, but as I did more research, I felt like I at least needed to give "Little Girl" a listen for context. So I played the whole thing and, with no expectations this time, it wasn't the worst thing ever. Pretty generic 80s radio rock, but with a healthy dose of new-wave-inspired snyth work. The lyrics though are definitely some of the worst I've seen. Not offensive necessarily; most, if not all, seem to be generic songs about women and how to get them.

There are some bands of this same genre for whom, for one reason or another, I don't have the same disdain. I’m sure if I did the same kind of deep dive on most of them that I did for this, it would sour me, but the promise that I perceived was made by this album cover was broken so hard, it is difficult to forgive.

Thanks to Jenna for the Photograph, and Roger for the help typing.